Blood Will Have Blood
by Gamma Orionis
Summary: Victoria, in the miserable position of being a servant to her illegitimate father and having to endure the taunts of the other servants, takes pleasure only in simple, if perverse things like watching coroners bring dead bodies to the morgue not far from her house. Until a man who frightens her, for good reason, comes to her bedroom one night and she wakes in a new, inhuman body...
1. Chapter 1

Author's Notes: Written for the vampirebigbang on LiveJournal. evian_fork has done beautiful graphics for it, which can be seen at evian-fork**DOT**livejournal**DOT**com/114745**DOT**html

Yes, this is actually _serious_ Twilight fic from Gamma... contain your shock.

Warnings: Violence (both from vampires and from humans), imagery somewhat reminiscent of sexual assault, some abuse of a servant, a degree of non-canon-ness (not that you would know unless you read Victoria's page on the Twilight wiki. Which I did. For research), utter lack of historical research.

* * *

_Night_

)O(

Vanity was a terrible vice.

It was the worst of all the seven deadly sins, and she had always been told that an excess would land even the most Godly woman in Hell – an already sinful girl like Victoria would be quite doomed.

But, Victoria had long since decided that if God had nothing better to do than send a girl to the bowels of Hell for preening when she was young, then He was not a very good God at all, and furthermore, if all vain girls really _were _sent to Hell, then Victoria would at least not be alone.

That was what she reasoned to herself when she sat before her mirror, running her comb through her long, vibrantly red hair over and over again.

"At the mirror still, Victoria?"

She sighed, setting down her comb and turning, inclining her head to her mother. "I see no reason why I should not stay at the mirror," she said, and though she tried to disguise the rebellious tone in her voice, she did not accomplish it and knew that she must have sounded dreadfully bitter.

"We have spoken many times of the sin of vanity–"

"I was just thinking on that very matter." Victoria rose, glancing once more at her reflection to tuck a curl behind her ear. "If I'm not already going to Hell–"

"Hush, Victoria!" The blood drained from her mother's face and she crossed herself swiftly. "Have I not told you enough about…" she dropped her voice to a breathless hiss, "_Hell_ that you know better than to speak of it?"

"I will not tempt the Devil into this house with just the sound of my voice, Mother." Victoria's lip twisted. "I am sure he has better ways to pass his time than snatching the souls of scullery maids."

"You would be surprised," she said darkly, and Victoria felt sure that she would have heard more – most likely some long and rambling theological discussion that left her desperately confused, with her head spinning.

"I'm sure I would, Mother," she said, cutting her off before the lecture could begin, picking up her skirts, and hurrying down to the kitchens.

She purposefully kept her eyes down – the other servants in the household did not care for her, and she supposed that she could not blame them. As much as she loved her appearance, she had heard too many whispers that she looked like a witch for her own comfort.

If she could have avoided interacting with the servants – or worse, the owners of the house – she would have gladly done so, no matter what tasks she would have had to take on. Being sent out to the master's farms and working the land like a boy would have been preferable to staying inside and being driven near-mad by the proximity of people who loathed her so much.

And what reason did they have for loathing her?

Why, that she was the master's daughter, of course.

Victoria had something that none of the other servants had – not one scullery maid or cook or nurse. She had noble blood running through her veins, and it was clear to everyone who saw her brilliant green eyes, her short, upturned nose – features of the Master of the house that he had unwittingly passed on to his illegitimate daughter…

How pleasing it was, she thought, when they shot her glares spiked with jealousy. They could beat her and mock her and do everything they knew how to do to make her life a living Hell, but they could never take her blood from her.

And that, she thought to herself, dropping her eyes and smiling almost derisively at the floor as she picked up a bucket to go fetch water from the well in the centre of the village square, was why she so loved to admire her own reflection. That was why she was vain, and she thought if she could only explain it to God, He would surely understand and not hold it as a sin.

There was a heavy fog in the air – thick with moister and thicker with the scent of pestilence – and the sky was grey, completely obscuring the sun, but a smile crawled onto Victoria's face the moment she stepped out of the kitchens, bucket in hand. If she had been a bit younger or a bit less noticeable, she might have swung the bucket and skipped her way to the well, but she knew all too well the beatings she would get for so flippantly wasting her time.

Still, she thought, she would have liked to skip. Moments like this – where she was outside the house – were moments when she remembered how dreadfully pleasant it was to be alive. Even though she could smell rotting corpses from the hospital not two streets down, even though everything was grey with smoke from a thousand wood fires that people kept burning in their hearths even in the heat of summer because they believed that the smoke purified the air and would keep sickness away, the world outside the house felt open and bright and _clear_ in comparison to what was inside it.

Victoria hummed softly as she stood at the edge of the well and looped the rope around her bucket. She kept half an eye on the street outside while she lowered it.

The doctors were coming by.

Victoria often had the chance to watch them – accompanied by priests sprinkling holy water on the ground over which they walked – dragging their carts full of corpses of those who had succumbed to the plague. She had been told off more than once for morbidity, being told that it was witch-like to take interest in the dead, but being accused of witchery was an almost daily occurrence for her and she brushed off accusations of being unnatural. Death was natural, after all, she reasoned, and so an interest in it should be equally natural.

The cart of corpses bumped along the road, and the few people who had been walking along it scurried away, many of them crossing themselves and the rest holding posies to their noses to keep away the smell. Victoria thought the smell wasn't terribly bad – not _good_, exactly, but _interesting_.

The cart rolled over a large bump in the road, and Victoria pressed both hands over her mouth in shock – inadvertently letting go of the well's handle and letting the bucket splash back down into the water – as a child's body slid off the top of the pile and lay crumpled on the stones. The doctors and priests seemed not to notice, and Victoria was frozen with shock.

It was a little girl's body, and she couldn't have been more than six. Her face was blue and puffy, and there was a black crust over several sores on her face.

"Sirs–" Victoria croaked, but already they were rounding the corner, leaving the child's corpse lying on the stones in their wake.

For what felt like an eternity, Victoria could not bring herself to move. She stood frozen beside the well, staring in horror, and she was only startled out of her immobility when a man stepped out of the shadows and approached the little girl.

Victoria ducked down automatically. She didn't know why she did it – she was doing nothing wrong, doing nothing at all save gathering water in her own house's courtyard – but she knelt behind the well, peering out over the rim and watching the man intently.

He was pale – paler than her even, so fair that his skin looked like milk, or like the very _whitest_ spots on marble tile – and moved with a grace that she had only ever seen dancers employ, but he did not look to her like a dancer.

Vomit rose in her throat as he approached the girl's corpse.

The stench must have been unbearable for him. Victoria had never known anyone else who could even be within twenty feet of a diseased body without their posies or at least a perfumed handkerchief pressed over their nose, but this man seemed not to care at all about the smell, and he was getting _far_ too close for Victoria's own comfort now.

He leaned down over the body, and the whole world swam before Victoria's eyes. The smell must have been overwhelming for him, and now he was on his knees beside her, leaning even closer, his face inches from her rotting flesh.

Victoria's heart pounded as he slowly put his arms around the girl, lifting her into a sitting position, and then she let out a small shriek as he sank his teeth into her neck.

The surprise sent her toppling backwards, out of her unstable crouch, and she landed sprawled on the ground behind the well. By the time she'd lifted herself back up, the man – and the girl's corpse – were gone.

She would have thought that she had had a fainting spell and hallucinated the whole thing if it were not for how clearly she could still see it in her mind.

Her hands shook and her palms were slick with sweat as she picked herself back up and tried to retrieve the bucket. The water made it feel unbearably heavy as she turned the crank.

"You look sick, Victoria…"

Victoria turned, jumping at the sound of a voice so near at hand, and the bucket splashed down into the water again.

Anne was standing behind her.

Anne was Victoria's sister – her _older_ sister, as she never missed an opportunity to remind her – and she looked worried. She _always_ looked worried. She always _was_ worried, and it was usually enough to make Victoria want to ignore anything she said. She had no use for someone so nervous.

But if Victoria really _had_ just seen what she was absolutely positive she had seen, then she didn't care how needlessly nervous Anne was.

"I- there was- there was this man–" Victoria began, and then regretted starting it that way when Anne looked horrified.

"Oh Vic- he didn't–"

"No!" Victoria said quickly. "He didn't hurt me… I don't think he even saw me, but the doctors and the priests were taking a cart of bodies to the hospital and one fell off and then this man- he came up to it- and- and–"

"And what, Victoria; spit it out…"

"He _bit_ her!" Victoria cried almost hysterically. "He _bit_her, Anne, I swear – he picked her up and- and–" Her stomach heaved and she doubled over, retching.

"Victoria…" Anne sounded a bit bemused now instead of her usual nervousness. "Victoria, don't be silly – no one would _bite_ a dead body…"

"But I _saw him!_" Victoria raised her head, her eyes wild. "I saw him, I swear I did, Anne! Really!"

"You ought to come inside and lie down – you're not well, Victoria…"

"Of course I'm not well!" she cried. "I _saw_ a–"

"You didn't see anything!" Anne interrupted, and now she sounded impatient instead of concerned. "You're being silly, and you'd best stop it right now, because if people find out you're seeing things like that, then you _know_ you'll be in trouble…" She dropped her voice to a nervous whisper. "I've heard about girls getting sent away for seeing things like that."

"But I _did_ see–"

Anne slapped her.

Victoria reeled. She had been hit many times before, but _never_ by her sister, and she had never expected it to happen.

"How- how _dare you!_" she sputtered at last, clutching her cheek. Tears were prickling her eyes, but she held them back for pride. "How _dare you_ lay a hand on me!"

"You have no idea…" Anne trailed off, then stamped one foot. "I'm saving you! Do you want to be sent away to- to an asylum for crazy women who see things that don't happen?"

"But it _did_ happen!"

"That's what all crazy women say!"

Victoria turned away from her sister, her face screwing up in an attempt to stop herself from showing half of what she felt. "Fine! You don't believe me – go inside, then, and leave me alone!"

Anne stamped away, and Victoria leaned over the well, trembling. Tears ran down her face despite her best efforts to keep them away.

She _had_ seen the girl being bitten. She would have bet her life on it.

But if she had seen it, then where had the man gone? He had been out of her sight for only a moment, not nearly long enough for him to _go_ anywhere…

She wiped her eyes, breathing deeply, then lifted the bucket out of the well again. She splashed a bit of water on her face before heading back into the kitchens.

"Where have you been?" demanded Sarah, the head cook, and Victoria winced.

"I'm sorry," she said, not answering the question, but instead pouring a kettleful of water and setting it over the fire to boil it for the master's tea. It was all she could do to stop from screaming, from crying or running away, but she managed to avoid showing any sort of feeling at all.

"Then hurry up," Sarah said. "There's going to be company tonight, and the master will skin us all alive if dinner isn't done properly."

"Mm." Victoria nodded, still not trusting herself to be able to speak without her voice shaking at least.

"You oughtn't let Victoria near the food," one of the other women murmured, "she'll probably poison the guests…"

Victoria whirled, her eyes blazing. "I would _not!_" she cried, clenching her fists. "I would _never–_"

"Be quiet, Mary," Sarah snapped. "Victoria, there's bread that needs kneading. See to it."

Victoria fumed as she crossed the kitchen, covering her hands in flour and all but attacking the bread dough. She beat at it, slamming her hands into the pliable surface of the dough until it sprung back when she hit it, then, as she had done so many times that it was second nature, she broke it into four pieces, rolled them into nice loaf shapes, and shoved them into the oven.

"Good," Sarah observed, and Victoria had the urge to snap _of course it's _ good_, you know I can bake bread._

But of course she kept silent, because the absolute _last_ thing she wanted after seeing that man was to get into a fight over something as insignificant as bread.

She spent the day quietly fuming and silently pondering the man who had been in the street, searching for some explanation that she could use to reconcile what she _knew_ she had seen with what she knew to be true about people – namely, that people _didn't bite dead bodies._

She shuddered, a chill running up her spine.

"Victoria, get the soup!" Mary snapped irritably, and Victoria winced. She had been leaning against the wall, trying to avoid being trampled – and trying at the same time to get rid of the image of that man's teeth sinking into the girl's flesh – and she should have known that that would be taken for laziness.

"I'm sorry," she mumbled, quickly crossing the kitchen to stir the pot of soup and take it off the fire.

_Get control of yourself, Victoria. You'll only drive yourself mad if you don't…_

"Hurry up!" Sarah told her, rushing into the kitchen, looking dishevelled. "Guests are already arriving!"

"Already?" Victoria pushed a lock of hair back, out of the way, and sighed impatiently. "How can they be arriving already? It's not dinner time yet!"

"And yet, they're here. Now hurry up!"

"Yes, ma'am," Victoria mumbled, ladling soup into a large bowl, setting it on a tray along with a loaf of bread and hurrying upstairs. The task of running up a flight of stairs without spilling the soup was enough to take her attention, and for the first time in the day, she wasn't thinking about the man in the street.

Or rather, she didn't think about him until she had gone into the dining hall and saw him sitting at the table.

The tray slipped from her hands, crashing to the floor. The soup spilled out across the floorboards, the tray cracked, and the loaf of bread went skittering and landed at the man's face.

"_Victoria!_"

The master's face flushed an ugly colour of purple and Victoria shrank back, horrified at her own clumsiness. She knew well what sort of punishment she would receive for this – spilling the soup and in front of the guests as well – but she couldn't bring herself to care, for her eyes were fixed on the man from the street.

He was looking back at her, his eyes glittering intently, and Victoria stumbled backwards, fighting the urge to scream and run away. Perhaps it was only a trick of the lamps and candlelight, but to her, his eyes looked positively crimson.

"Victoria, what ever is the matter with you?" the master demanded, standing up and advancing on her.

"I'm s- sorry, sir!" stammered Victoria. "I- I didn't mean to–"

"I should hope you didn't, but _not meaning to_ is hardly an excuse! Clean up this mess at once!" He grabbed a napkin from the table and shoved it at her, and Victoria fell to her knees immediately, dropping her head so that the guests wouldn't see her tears of fear and shame.

"Apologize to our guests!" the master snapped, and Victoria raised her head swiftly.

"I'm very sorry," she repeated, her voice quivering. "I- I don't know what–"

But she knew _exactly_ what had happened, and if the way the man from the street was looking at her was any indication, he knew too. Victoria trembled – the way he was looking at her made her positive that he knew exactly what she had seen. He was staring at her with an expression somewhere between wary and mildly amused, and she did not care for it.

"Hurry and clean it up, then!" the master ordered her. Victoria tried to sop up the soup with the napkin, but there was too much and she knew how wretched she must have looked.

"Allow me."

Victoria's head snapped up.

The voice was velvet smooth, quiet, but there was a power to it that made chills run up her spine and something in her throat clench, as if from excitement. Her hands trembled a little as she brushed back a lock of her hair and stared at the man from the street, who had stood up and was approaching her with all the grace he had demonstrated before when moving towards the little girl's corpse.

"N- no- no need–" she stammered, but he ignored her. He sank to his knees and drew a handkerchief from his pocket, and when he set it to the ground, his hand brushed lightly against Victoria's.

His skin sent a jolt through her and she jumped back automatically as though she had put her hand to the metal grate that covered the fire, but she didn't register pain where he had touched her. It was more fright – terrible fright, and she knew not whether that was because of the touch or because of what she _knew_ she had seen.

"I'm s- sorry, sir," she told him, scampering back, but he seemed unperturbed and continued to work at cleaning up the soup.

"There's really no need for that, James," the master said impatiently. "You ought not to be doing a servant's work for her – it will encourage her laziness."

_I am not _ lazy_,_ Victoria wanted to snap, but she could not, so she forced a polite smile.

"Yes, sir," she agreed. "You need not help me – I can do it myself without trouble…"

The man – James, the master had called him – tilted his head lightly, considering her. "Are you sure, miss?"

"I'm quite sure," she said. She didn't look at him, but kept her head bowed with her hair covering her face and her heart pounding somewhere in the vicinity of her throat.

"James, do come back to the table," the master said impatiently. "Honestly, you make a fool of yourself…"

He stood and moved back from Victoria, but even as she kept her eyes on her hands and tried to stop herself from shaking, she could feel him staring down at her with an intensity that made her tremble. There were tears in her eyes, she was sure, and she tried to hide her face, picking up the tray and bowl and the ruined loaf of bread and backing away.

"I'm very sorry," she whispered again, then bolted from the room.

Only when she was out in the hall did she put the tray down again and collapse to the ground, letting the tears flow freely. She didn't think that she had ever been so afraid – seeing the man there had come as a terrible shock and it had been made so much worse by him coming _near_ her…

"Dear God," she breathed, tilting her head back and trying to draw a complete lungful of breath. "Dear God, protect me…"

She did not expect an answer from God, of course, but it was comforting to think that he might hear her if she spoke so to him.

At last, when she was sure that she could stand without her knees weakening and her body giving out entirely beneath her, she gripped the wall and dragged herself to her feet. Her heart was still beating, oh so terribly quickly, but she felt better than when she had been in the dining room with the man – James, the master had called him – looking down on her.

She must have been mistaken about seeing him bite the little girl.

That was the only explanation that she could think of. Surely, if he had, the master would know – for there was nothing that the master didn't know – and would not allow him into the house. Perhaps James was the little girl's father, or some other member of her family, and he had meant to do nothing more than pick her up and embrace her. Perhaps it had been a kiss Victoria had seen him give her, not a bite.

Yes, that made so much more sense... after all, who would bight a dead girl? Even the vampires in stories that the other women sometimes liked to tell when they were feeling idle and wished to share some ridiculous fairy stories would not bite a sick, dead creature - if Victoria was not mistaken, she had heard that vampires could only feed on the blood of the living or the healthy or they too would fall ill…

"And what madness is this?" she demanded of herself in a low hiss. "Thinking of vampires now? Have you lost your mind, Victoria? Vampires do not exist, as you know perfectly well! You're being foolish."

She nodded decisively, then strode back down the stairs, the tray clutched in her hands. She tried not to blush too darkly when she went into the kitchen and was met with accusing stairs.

"Someone else needs to bring the food up to them," she said, and when Sarah demanded to know why, she gave no answer, and only shook her head.

"Go to bed, Victoria," Anne spoke up, then glanced at the others. "She's been ill all day. We should pray for her, that she doesn't contract the plague..."

"She doesn't have the plague," Sarah said impatiently. "She's a lazy girl."

"I am not!" Victoria snapped, but Anne silenced her with a slap.

"Go to bed," she said. "Now."

"Fine," Victoria muttered, turning away and plodding upstairs. She glanced briefly in her mirror, but the sight of her own beauty did nothing to please her. She collapsed onto the thin mattress and buried her face in her hands.

Perhaps she was going mad. Perhaps it would not be long before the doctors came and took her away to put her into the asylum near the hospital, and then she could do nothing but watch every corpse being taken in…

"Are you the servant who spilled the soup at dinner?"

Victoria twisted in bed, crying out and scrambling into a sitting position, her heart pounding terribly. She thanked God that she hadn't taken off her dress, for James was standing in the doorway of her small room, looking down at her with an expression of mild interest. He must have entered perfectly silently, though the stairs creaked terribly and Victoria could usually hear people coming from the very bottom.

"Yes, sir," she squeaked. "How- why are you here?"

"I wished to apologize," he said, all polite cordiality. "I should have helped you…"

"Oh, no, sir… it- it was not your fault," Victoria said shakily, though, of course, it was _entirely_ his fault.

"Nonsense," he said. "As a guest, it matters not that it was not my fault – it is my duty to help…"

"No, of course it isn't," she said shakily. She pressed her hand against her breast, trying to still her pounding heart. "I- I- may I ask why you came to my bedroom?" _Or how you found it_…

"I said that I wished to apologize." He moved a little closer to her, and his eyes gleamed darkly in the light of the sunset filtering between boards in her roof. "And… I have seen you before."

_You saw me before when I watched you take up that little girl…_

"Do you recognize me?" James asked in a hiss, then smirked slightly. "Oh, of course you do…"

"No, sir!" Victoria said immediately, shrinking back still further. "I've never seen you before, I swear it!"

"Funny, then, that you should be so terribly afraid of me," he breathed. He was moving still closer now, unnervingly close, so close that Victoria could smell him. He did not smell of unwashed cloth and sweat and bad perfume as so many men did, but oddly sweet – closer to the smell of fresh flowers, or of sugar cakes being made in the bakery than to a regular human.

"I- I…" she stammered, and then found herself lost for words when he reached out and lay one fingertip on her lips. His skin was cold, like stone on a frosted day, like the water that came out of the well in the dead of winter.

"Don't lie to me," he breathed. "Don't lie, because I know the truth… I know the truth all the time…"

"I am not lying," Victoria whispered, but she didn't sound the slightest bit vehement or convinced, even to herself, and the feeling of his hand brushing against her mouth was making her too weak and dizzy to give any other response.

"Now," he said softly, his voice still civil and almost kind, "I know you were outside this morning, and I know you saw me on the street, so it would be best for you to tell me _right now_ exactly what you saw… in your own words, if you please. Your own description of what happened."

"Leave my bedroom!" Victoria ordered. "Please- or I'll scream! I'll scream!" She tried to sound as brave as she could, but knew that it was barely a shaking whimper. "I'll scream and the master will come up here and throw you out–"

"Firstly," James interrupted smoothly, sounding not at all interested in what she was saying, "no, you aren't going to scream."

"Am I not?" Victoria challenged. "You don't think I'm going to? I will! I will, I swear!" She jumped to her feet and rushed towards the door, but James caught her in his arms, holding her still. His flesh felt ice cold and shivers ran up and down Victoria's spine as she struggled violently.

"Don't do that," he told her, and his voice was cold, hard, not at all the sort of smooth and velvety tone he had used with her before. "It does not become a woman to go screaming as you intend to."

"I will- I will- _help!_" she screamed, clawing at him, but her nails snapped when she tried to dig them into his face and she screamed as her own blood pooled on her fingers.

He let go of her.

Victoria had not been expecting him to do so and she screeched as she tumbled down to the ground, her chest heaving as she tried to steady herself, but when she looked back up at James, he was backing away slowly, his hands twisted and his fingers flexed like a cat extending its claws.

"_Help!_" Victoria screamed again, but James let out a hiss and before she knew what was happening, he was all but on top of her, and her fingers were in his mouth.

"Get _off me!_" Victoria screamed, writhing. He was far stronger than her, far larger and more powerful, and she could not even shift him.

Then she felt his teeth penetrate her skin.

Victoria had been cut many times before, of course. One could not be a servant and avoid it – there were knives to be worked with in the kitchen, scrapes to be gotten on the flagstones or against the metal grating on the oven. There were whippings to be received when one did not do the work that the master wanted, which could often leave one bloodied for days afterwards. Victoria was no stranger to cuts and blood.

This, however, was vastly different from anything that she had felt before. There was an agonizing pain in her hand that should not have been present – one that burned all the way up her arm, making her cry out and sob and writhe without being able to stop herself.

"_No!_" she wailed, as a burning pain shot up her arm. She tried to throw him off, tried to struggle away, but could manage nothing. She was beginning to go numb, especially her fingers, still encased in his mouth.

He pulled away from her hand and she let it fall limply to the ground, all but unable to move it. She tried to lift it and saw her flesh pale and greying where his teeth had sunken into her.

"What- what have you…" she began, but the words would not come to her groggy mind, and all she could do was watch in terror as he leaned over her and sank his teeth into her neck.


	2. Chapter 2

_Dawn_

)O(

Victoria felt very heavy when she awoke. Very heavy indeed – as though her whole body had been transformed to stone. She wasn't sure that she would be able to move at all if she tried, and could barely draw breath into her lungs. In fact, doing so was a great and painful effort.

She stopped trying and shut her eyes, waiting for her natural instinct to take over and force her to breathe.

It didn't.

She lay for several long minutes – and it felt like more, it felt like hours that she lay on… lay on what, the ground? Her bed? – and not a single breath was drawn in through her lips.

She tried to move her eyelids, but they were as heavy as the rest of her. She couldn't bring herself to open her eyes, not even a crack, and perhaps that was for the best, for she felt as though any light might make her head burst open.

Something hot and rough brushed against her foot and she lashed out automatically, for her body didn't feel so heavy now that it had interpreted a threat. She sat straight upright, her eyes flying open, and then let out a cry, pressing her hands over them as the light blinded her in its brightness.

It took her several moments before she was able to open her eyes again, and when she did, she saw that she was indeed lying on the ground, and, moreover, that the bloodied corpse of a rat was smashed against the wall near her feet. She stared at it with perplexed horror, then moved closer to look at it.

Had _she _ done that?

It was lying in a shaft of sunlight from the open window. It looked as though its body had been split open from the impact, and it was dripping blood.

_Sweet, enticing blood-_

"Victoria!" she hissed at herself, shocked that she could even think such things, and her voice sounded sweet and musical to her own ears and the rat looked so beautiful, lying there drenched in its own blood…

She couldn't resist. She reached out and snatched it in her hand, then shrieked as her skin entered the sunlight.

It was like watching herself being set on fire. Her eyes were suddenly filled with incredibly bright, sparkling light, and she wrenched her hand back, pressing it over her eyes again.

_So bright!_

Blood smeared over her face and before she could stop, she had put her hand in her mouth and was eagerly, desperately sucking it from her fingers.

By the time Victoria had even realized what she was doing, her hand was clean. And the rat was clean as well, no more blood on it…

_Surely she hadn't…_

She stared down at it, then leapt, for she could see tiny insects jumping from it – fleas, surely, but she could _never_ see fleas unless they were dead and captured on white fabric and she leaned in close to see them, but these fleas stood out brightly and they seemed almost slow.

And she had _eaten the rat._

No, just as bad – drank the rat's blood.

"Oh, dear God," Victoria whispered, tilting her head back and staring through the cracks in the ceiling, past every visible splinter and up to the bright, blue sky overhead, "What's happened to me?"

She stumbled to her feet and clutched at the wall to keep herself from falling. Her body felt strange, unreal, _not her own_. Her legs were heavy and when she touched her thigh, her flesh felt hard. Could she have fallen in such a way that she had injured herself and her legs had become swollen? But they didn't _feel_ swollen…

Moving felt strange and unnatural. Her limbs jerked and twitched when she tried even to do something as simple as raising her hand to brush her hair from her face.

_Dear God, what's wrong with me?_

She turned slowly and caught sight of herself in her looking glass.

Victoria was instantly transfixed by her appearance. She stared openly at herself, and, for once, she thought that her staring was justified by more than vanity.

_Dear God._

Her skin looked so white that it was frightening – paler than any human's skin should ever have looked, and, in fact, whiter than anything that _wasn't_ skin that she had ever seen. She raised her hands to touch her cheeks and they felt strangely hard to her touch, just as her legs had. Her fingertips made soft _clink_ noises against her face, like stones touched together.

What was this? This could not be an illness – she did not feel ill. She did not feel _anything_– anything except the endless stimuli from the world around her. The boards beneath her feet, the rough whisper of her dress against her legs, even the scratch of her own hair on her neck, all were painfully easy to feel, but she had no sense of such familiar feelings as the ache of hunger in her belly or the roughness in her lungs that she could only presume came from years and years of breathing bad air. Her stomach was practically devoid of any feeling at all, and she had still not drawn a breath.

_Madness_, she thought. Some sort of madness, mania or hysteria had come over her. She had been overtaken by some disease of the mind that made her believe that she was experiencing these symptoms. She was not _really_ feeling them – how could she be? That defied any explanation except that she was losing her mind.

"Where _is_ that lazy girl?" she heard someone say, and she whirled around immediately, for the voice sounded so clear that she thought that someone was standing right behind her. But no one was in the room.

"She's unwell," Victoria heard Anne saying. "She fell asleep crying on the floor…"

_I did not._

"Fetch her!" That other voice was Sarah, Victoria became aware. "Fetch her and bring her down. She made a fool of herself last night, but that is no reason that she should shirk her duty today. She has even more reason than we have to serve the master today!"

"Yes, Sarah," Anne said meekly, and then Victoria heard stairs creaking. Victoria stood still and waited for her sister to arrive, to come into the room and see what Victoria had become – surely Anne would have some understanding, some explanation of what had happened. And if she did not acknowledge the change that had come over Victoria, then that would surely prove that it was madness and that Victoria should ignore her changed appearance until her mind ceased to play tricks upon her.

"Victoria," Anne called softly, through the door. She might have been speaking clearly in Victoria's ear for how easily she could make her voice out. "Victoria, you must get up and come down to the kitchen…"

"Come in here, Anne," Victoria said, and she spoke but quietly, because it stung her ears to talk in any louder a voice.

The door creaked open, and as Anne appeared, Victoria became aware of the most _wonderful_ scent on the air.

She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply through her nose – it still hurt her a little to breathe, but not half as much as it had when she had first awoken. And the smell…

It was a sweetly homey smell, Victoria thought. There was a touch of bread about it, but mostly fresh grass and wood that had been cleaned with lye soap, and just a hint of some exotic spice. Victoria couldn't get enough of it.

"Victoria?" Anne sounded slightly uncertain. "Victoria, what are you doing? You look… different."

"I… feel different." Victoria sounded slightly faint, she knew. But she couldn't bring herself to speak any louder. She felt half-afraid that to speak as loudly as Anne was doing would push away the smell.

"Sarah needs you down in the kitchens." Perhaps it was Victoria's imagination, but she thought that Anne sounded afraid. "Please come down," she added. "Please…"

"Mmm…" Victoria's eyes snapped open when Anne stepped backwards, for the smell started to retreat with her, and Anne stared into Victoria's eyes.

There was silence for a moment, in which Anne stared and Victoria felt that something must be wrong, for the way her sister was looking at her, and then Anne let out a blood-curdling shriek.

"Your _eyes_, Victoria!"

"My eyes?" Victoria's hands flew to her eyes. "What's wrong with them?"

"They're _red!_" Anne was stumbling backwards, out of the room, and Victoria became aware that her sister was moving very clumsily. She wondered briefly whether Anne was so distressed that she was stumbling, or whether she had always moved that way and Victoria had only now noticed.

She did not know how to respond, and let Anne run away before she went to her looking glass and stared closely at herself.

_It was only the light. Her eyes had not turned red. That was silly- that was foolish-_

But Anne had seen them. Practical Anne, who had no fancies or imagination. Anne had seen her eyes and been so afraid of them that she had run from her little sister. It couldn't be that they were _not_ red.

Disease could manifest with red eyes. Victoria was sure of that – she had seen so many sick people with reddened eyes. But their eyes had been red all around, like blood had leaked into them – hers were as white as ever, and only her irises, formerly such a beautiful green, were crimson now.

She moved back quickly and shook her head.

Perhaps Anne was going mad too. Perhaps they were _both_ mad. Perhaps there was something in the food that had infected them both.

She would go down to the kitchens, that was what she would do. Sarah would break any fancies or madness that were lurking in her mind. Never before had Victoria thought that she might ever be grateful for Sarah's eternal harshness, but right now, she _wanted_sense to be beaten into her head.

She fled her bedroom and was halfway down the rickety flight of stairs when she heard her master's sharp voice.

"Victoria! Come here!"

Victoria froze in place. She turned slowly and stared up at him.

His face looked ruddy and blotchy. She could see where he had powdered over it – individual flecks of the powder stood out bright and white against his flushed face – and she could also see how his mouth twitched and pulsed as he spoke.

"Come here."

_No. I can't. I need to go see Sarah._

"You will come here _now!_"

Victoria approached reluctantly, swallowing hard. Her own mouth twisted up when she got close to him, and she wondered whether he was employing a new and particularly foul cologne, for he smelled dreadful and made her want to be sick. His smell was cloyingly sweet, but in a dreadfully unpleasant way. He smelled sweet the same way that manure or rotting flesh smelled sweet.

"Your actions last night were _inexcusable!_" She had never before noticed how he sprayed when he spoke. Droplets of his spittle splashed against her face and she resisted every urge to wipe them away.

"I apologize–" she began, but even before she had finished saying that much, she knew that it was no good. He grabbed her by a hank of her hair and wrenched on it.

The pain that shot through her scalp was far more intense than what she was used to, and she gasped in pain. But the pain cleared her mind a little – almost enough that she could think through the almost drugged haze that smelling him put her into.

He slapped her hard across her face, and then drew back his hand, gasping in pain. Victoria had felt almost nothing, but he must have been agonized, because he doubled over, clutching his wrist. She stared in horror and confusion, but those feelings transformed swiftly to something quite different when she saw droplets of blood along the side of his hand.

There was a split second in which she wondered how he had managed to slap her so hard that he cut himself, but before she could even finish the thought, she launched herself forward and grabbed his hand. He let out a cry of shock, but Victoria ignored him, and latched her mouth down over the bloody flesh.

_Oh_, but it tasted good. She had to struggle not to be sick from the smell of him, but the taste of his blood was so much better than that, and so much better too than the taste of the blood. He screamed and she bit down on his fingers. She felt his bones snap beneath her teeth. She felt his fingers writhe helplessly in her mouth like worms on the path after a rain. And she felt hot, sweet blood running down her throat.

His eyes were bulging out grotesquely and he made a small, gurgling noise. Part of Victoria – a small, detached part – thought the situation almost comical. He looked so foolish, so much like a puppet or a clown.

A blood vessel was throbbing in his throat and Victoria's eyes latched onto it. She abandoned his hand and grabbed him by his head, forcing it to the side, and before she had even swallowed a gulp of the blood from his hand, she was on his neck.

Her teeth pierced his skin as easily as they might sink into a piece of overcooked vegetable, and her mouth was flooded with the sweet and tangy flavour of his blood. _Oh_, it was so good, _oh_, but she wanted so much more…

He was not struggling anymore. He hung limply in her arms while she sucked deeply, but she could feel his sluggish heartbeat still, and so she did not let him fall.

That would have been cruel.

Not until he was completely still, not until his chest no longer rose or fell with breathing, and when there was no more blood in his veins for her to suck out, did she drop him.

He collapsed onto the steps and slithered down to the landing below, and Victoria stared after him, her eyes widening.

For the first time, the reality of what she had done to him sank in.

She had _sucked his blood out of him._

She had _killed him_.

_If there is any man who deserved such a death, it was him_, she tried to tell herself, but that did not negate the horror of what she had done. Victoria had, in the past, committed no sin more grievous than harbouring thoughts of vanity and pride. She had sinned, yes, but now she had broken two of the Commandments in one act.

_Thou shalt not kill_.

She had always thought that that, of all the Commandments, would be the one that she would break last. She could imagine breaking others – like committing adultery – without ever intending or expecting to, but never before had she ever even thought of _killing_. The horror of the act was too much for her to comprehend.

_And thou shalt honour thy mother and father._

_Her father._

Over all the years that she had spent as a servant, she had trained herself not to think of the master as _her father._ A father in what she considered the traditional sense was a near-mythical creature to her mind. A father was the sort of man who doted on his daughter, who slapped her only for misbehaviour. A father was not a man who let his daughter work as a servant and who beat her for any action he considered but the _slightest_ bit unseemly or unpleasant.

But he was her father still. He was the man who had impregnated her mother, the man whose blood ran in her veins…

_His blood ran in her veins now._

With each passing moment, the horror of what had happened sank in more completely. Victoria stared at his body – _not just his body, his corpse_– where it lay upon the steps. Still warm. She could feel the heat radiating off of it, growing less with each passing second…

"_Victoria!_"

Sarah's voice was sharp, and though it had sounded only stern when she began to speak, it rose into a panicked cry at the end of Victoria's name. Victoria raised her head and looked down the stairs to where Sarah stood at the bottom, looking up at her with an expression of profound terror.

And Victoria couldn't help herself.

She was down the stairs before she even realized what she was doing – had she not known better, she would have sworn that she had flown – and even as Sarah opened her mouth to scream, Victoria caught hold of her by her shoulders and sank her teeth into the beautiful, enticing vein on her neck.

She tasted better than the master had – not as sweet. Her blood had more of a warm and savoury taste, like well-cooked and seasoned meat, and Victoria sucked at it eagerly. She wanted to taste every drop, wanted to experience the flavour of the blood running over her tongue until she was satiated and she didn't think that she ever would be.

Sarah was twitching and making weak, feeble little noises, and Victoria ignored her. She _could_ ignore her, for with every passing second, she knew that Sarah was weakening, and soon, she would not be able to fight at all anymore. And that would be a moment that Victoria would treasure.

Sarah's pulse slowed, and as Victoria sucked the last drops of quickly congealing blood from the wound, she heard several cries of shock and fear.

Sarah's body slipped from Victoria's hands and fell with a wet, soft _thud_ upon the ground, and Victoria looked up into the doorway of the kitchen.

The servants were standing there, all of them, assembled in a line as if they were an army planning to attack – and indeed, perhaps some of them were, for one was holding a pan up like a club and another held a knife out threateningly before himself.

Behind the line, her face streaked with tears, was Anne.

_Anne._

Victoria took a step towards them. She wanted Anne, wanted her to tell her that everything was all right and that it was all a dream. She wanted Anne to hold her and tell her that she had been taken over by a sickness outside her control, and that she would not be held responsible for her behaviour – and, moreover, that the sickness would pass and that she would have no need of being taken to the hospital.

But when she moved close, the servants shouted and brandished their weapons and Victoria shied away automatically. She knew not whether the weapons would hurt her – perhaps they would not – but she did not wish to find out.

"Anne?" she said softly.

Anne let out a whimper. "She's taken, the Devil's taken her!"

"Anne…" Victoria said again, but as she reached out to try to push someone aside so that she could approach her sister, one of the cooks screamed and brought the frying pan down upon her arm.

It didn't hurt, but anger welled in her throat and she turned immediately on the assailant, whose face went pale with fear. He lifted the pan to protect himself.

_Stupid_.

Victoria grabbed at him, and this time, when she caught at his neck, she did not feel hunger for blood as she had with Sarah or with the master. What she felt was an overwhelming need to _hurt_, a need so intense that she could not find words to describe it to harm one of the people who had made her life so terrible for so long.

He screamed right before her teeth pierced his skin.

Blows rained down on her from all directions, but they merely bounced off of her skin and Victoria took no more notice of them than she did of fleas, but she was captivated once more by the taste of blood on her tongue. This man's blood tasted more like what she thought blood had tasted like before – salty and metallic, not nearly as pleasant as Sarah's blood had been, but far better than the master's, still. And _oh_, but it was wonderful to see his limbs jerk and twitched while he scrambled uselessly to push her away; _oh_, but it was beautiful to see hear his screams turn to gurgling sobs and finally go silent, and when his body too fell heavily to the ground, Victoria felt satisfaction far more intense than she had with either of the others.

But the satisfaction was immediately eclipsed by fear.

She was not used to such lack of restraint in herself – she was not the sort of person who could not control her urges. Being so helpless frightened her badly.

She had to get out.

The idea that she might hurt Anne – might hurt her by accident, as she had hurt Sarah – burned itself into her brain and she let out a cry. The smell of _everything_, of _everyone_ was so close and so intense that she could not bear it.

Victoria ran.

She brushed against Anne while she rushed past and the smell of her was so good that she almost stopped and turned back – but no, she had to run, she had to _get out, get out, get out!_

When Victoria flung the kitchen door open and stumbled outside, she thought that she had never been so grateful for so much foul-smelling rubbish in all her life. The street was so full of disgusting tastes and smells that she could not pick up anything pleasant enough to draw her.

She stood still and silent for a long moment, breathing in the air with relief, then set off down the street.

She knew not how long she walked, only that she wanted to get far, far away from people – people who she could hurt, people whose smells drew her in – and further away from the house. She could have run – she felt as if she had plenty of strength to do so – but she had no reason to rush. After all, what hurry could she be in now? It wasn't as if she had anywhere to go.

"Victoria, is it?"

Victoria whirled around. She came face-to-face with James, and quickly skipped backwards. She didn't know how he had managed to creep up behind her so quietly that she had not – even with her new, clear hearing – been able to hear him.

"Get away!" she hissed, raising her hands to fight. "You did this to me! _You!_ You did _something_ to me and put me into this state–"

"I don't deny it. Angry, are we?" There was a lazy calmness in his voice that spoke to Victoria of someone who was far too secure in his position. She wondered if she would be able to overtake him if she tried to attack. "You should _thank_ me, Victoria."

"I will do no such thing!" she protested. "I should not _thank you!_ You have stolen my soul – made me into an abomination–"

"Oh, don't be foolish," he said, and now there was a hint of impatience in his tone. "You should know better than to believe that this has anything to do with _souls_. I thought you were a clever girl."

_I am a clever girl_, she wanted to say, but she felt that that would be untruthful. After all, a truly clever girl would not have pounced on people who had done her no _real_ harm…

"So now, the question must be asked," James said slowly, taking a step forward, and she was struck by his grace, "what have you done that puts you in such doubt of your possession of a soul?"

She could not speak – she could not tell him. To confess her crimes would be to hold herself accountable for them, and if she made herself accountable, she would be a madwoman. She would be sent to a madhouse, or to the hospital to be dealt with, killed like a wild animal…

"I will not tell," he coaxed, his voice soft and crooning. "No one save for you and I will ever know what you say to me here. I do not tell secrets, Victoria."

She wanted to tell him that he should not use her name, that it indicated a familiarity that she did not want with him, but she did not. She could not say so.

"I… killed," she managed at last.

James looked satisfied. Surprisingly satisfied, for a man who had just had murder confessed to him. But perhaps he was mad too; perhaps he was an agent of the Devil who had been sent to destroy and corrupt Victoria.

"Who did you kill?"

"The master," she said, counting them off on her fingers. "Sarah. And a cook."

"Fair, for your first day…" And now he sounded contemplative, as if considering the finer points of some academic matter. "Most are far worse than you. You have some control, at least…"

"What are you talking about? What have I become?" Victoria wanted to cry, but she doubted her ability to do so. Her eyes felt strange and smooth and dry. "What have you done to me?"

"Do you not see, Victoria?" He reached out and put his fingers to her cheek, and they felt pleasantly cool, close to the temperature of her own skin. A small, shuddering gasp escaped her lips.

"See what?"

"I have elevated you," he told her, and the way he said it was frightening. He sounded almost ecstatic, even speaking of it. "I have brought you beyond the level of base _humanity…_"

"I don't understand–"

"You are a creature more than a human now." He put both his hands on her cheeks, running his thumbs along the skin below her eyes, and she no longer wanted to push him away. "You are a being worth far more than a _normal_ man or woman…"

"I don't understand," she repeated. "I don't–"

"Of course you don't understand. It is a complicated matter, Victoria, a complicated matter…"

"Please explain."

He sighed, and dropped his hands slowly. He let them brush over her shoulders and breasts as they fell. A chill ran through Victoria's body.

"Doctors have names for people like us," he said, "and common folk do too. _Vampir_ is my preferred term. It is from the Hungarian, though other languages have other words that describe us."

"_Vampir…_" The word sounded strange, exotic and slightly dangerous to Victoria. "What does it mean?"

"Humans have… varying understandings of the meaning," James said. He waved one hand vaguely, waving away their varying understandings. "There are, however, some consistent details between their ideas of what those like you and I are. The most popular, of course, is…"

"Is?"

He looked at her carefully. "The drinking of blood. The insatiable lust for blood. I am sure you have already experienced it."

_Oh, I have._

"They also believe us to be creatures of the night, unable to move freely in daylight," James continued. It was strange to Victoria how easily he carried on a conversation after saying such a thing as that she had experienced an insatiable lust for blood. "They are not _quite_ correct in saying that, but they have their reasons for believing so. We are more suited for the night than for the day."

Another dry sob tore itself from Victoria's throat. This was _horrifying_ – he was talking far too calmly about a matter that was tearing her mind apart. How was she to accept such _strange_ ideas about what she was, and what _he_ was?

But what else could she do but accept it? She could not tell him that he was mad – he was the only one who had offered any explanation at all for what had befallen her.

"What am I to do?" she whispered at last.

James looked rather pleased with that reaction to what he was saying. She would have been angrier, but she could not find it in herself. All that was left in her was a terrible, fearful emptiness.

"You are to come with me," James told her. He held out a hand and Victoria wondered whether he meant for her to take it. She had never been offered a hand from anyone save Anne before – _certainly_ never by a man.

"Come with you?"

"Come with me," he repeated. He grasped her hand and pressed his lips to her fingers. "You have intrigued me much, Victoria."

She wanted to say that he had no reason to be intrigued – that there was nothing even slightly intriguing about her – but that would have been a lie, and a useless thing to say, besides. He had already transformed her into his _higher being_. What could she do now but accept?

"Where will I go with you?"

His eyes – which, she could see now, were glowing a beautiful dark crimson in the light of the overcast sky – seemed to shine with happiness.

"Anywhere," he told her, kissing her hand again. "We are no longer bound by any restrictions. We could travel the world. We could go to the Americas – or we could settle into a little town close to here and feed off the drunkards that wander into our home. We shall go wherever we wish. We shall go wherever _you_ wish. We shall do whatever we wish. Whatever _you_ wish."

)O(

_Fin_


End file.
